The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to Measurement Uncertainty (MU) in Clinical Laboratories

April 2012

Graham White
SA Pathology, Flinders Medical Centre, Bedford Park, Adelaide, SA 5042 Australia
Graham.White@health.sa.gov.au

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What types of laboratory measurement should use MU?
Why does MU matter in routine clinical laboratories?
Can the Total Error (TE) approach help?
Limitations of the Total Error Concept (TE)
What is Measurement Uncertainty (MU)?
What does MU include?
How does MU handle bias?
How is MU estimated?
What if Bias is considered significant?
How is MU calculated for a measurement calculated from several other results?
How should MU estimates be assessed?
Summary
Should MU be routinely reported to clinicians?
Summary of MU and TE
References
I appreciate the invitation to provide further discussion on measurement uncertainty to follow the recent article by James Westgard on the recent CLSI MU guideline. A hitch-hiker likes to keep things simple, have an easily understood map and reach the destination with minimal discomfort. This hitch-hiker’s destination is to briefly demonstrate to routine laboratorians, using minimal jargon and statistics, that MU is logical, easy to understand, useful and appropriate to implement in clinical laboratories [1,2].